The present invention relates to an apparatus for processing printed products that have been fed to a processing drum having a generally horizontal axis of rotation.
An apparatus of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,324,014 and the corresponding EP-A-0550828 application. At a first end section of the processing drum, folded printed products can be deposited in a straddling manner on wall elements of the processing drum by a gripper conveyor. At a second end section, located at the other end of the processing drum, printed products that have been processed in the processing drum are removed by a gripper conveyor. The apparatus has, one behind the other, a multiplicity of sections to which processing and/or feeding stations are associated. The feeding stations are designed to deposit folded printed products in a straddling manner on top of the printed products which have already been deposited on the wall elements or to introduce inserts, at the correct page, into the compartments defined by the wall elements. At processing stations, inserts can be adhesively bonded, at the correct page, to the printed products, or the collected printed products can be stapled together.
Another apparatuses having a processing drum that is intended for processing printed products is disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,052,667, 5,052,666 and 4,981,291 and the corresponding EP-A-0341425, EP-A-0341424 and EP-A-0341423 applications. The apparatuses disclosed in these patents permit folded printed products to be collected, by being deposited one upon the other in a straddling manner on the wall elements of the processing drum. The printed products are, if appropriate, stapled, collated by laying them one beside the other or inserted into other folded printed products.
Furthermore, U.S. Pat. No. 4,678,174 and the corresponding EP-A-0218804 applications disclose an apparatus having a processing drum, which has collecting conveyors which are arranged around the axis of rotation. As the drum revolves, the collecting conveyors are pivoted around the axis of rotation such that they maintain their position. The removal device in the form of a removal conveyor has retaining members fastened at intervals on a circulating chain. Each retaining member is provided with two tongue-like clamping members which pivot in between the printed-product halves. The printed-product halves are raised up from one another by a lifting device. Supported by these clamping members in the region of the fold, the printed products are conveyed away from the processing drum and fed to another processing drum. At the second processing drum the printed products are opened, by pivoting the clamping members that are engaged between the printed-product halves, and, by pivoting the clamping members out, are allowed to fall onto collecting conveyors.
There are processing operations that must be performed on printed products which cannot be carried out in processing drums or can only be carried out therein at great expense. Furthermore, there are processing operations which require a considerable amount of time or comprise a number of successive operating steps. Such operations require that the processing drum has a large overall length. However the processing capacity, of such large overall length processing drums, remaining the same which, in addition to the increased space requirement, can also result in structural problems.
The object of the present invention is to improve the prior art mechanism such that processing steps which are time-consuming or can only be carried out with difficulty in the processing drum are able to be performed without increasing the overall length of the processing drum.